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Grey Goo
The Grey Goo was the utmost demise of an unknown civilization that existed in the edges of the known universe. Having attained important technologies like Nanotechnology, True AI, and Universal Constructors, one would tend to think that they were destined for greatness, but it caused their fall instead. A simple fault by a single person, which failed to program a stop condition, led to an eternally self-replicating hive-mind, bent on self-replicating itself until it covered the whole universe. It is currently limited to a single planet, and while the external appearance of the planet might give the idea that it has been fully assimilated, this is not the case. The planet's core has not been assimilated yet. The sheer temperature and gravity both crushes or melts any nanomachines that attempt to move closer to the core, and the progress towards it is very slow. Its hive-mind has not considered space travel due to the proximity of materials and instead dedicates its brain power to develop newer technology that would allow it to assimilate what is left of the planet. Biology The Grey Goo is composed of incalculable number of nanoscopic machines and does not possess what could be called biology in the strict sense. It does, however, possses many details that are akin to biology. The default state of the machines is the replicating one, but they can - and are - rebuilt with other purposes as well, as if every machine was a stem cell, and could be later specialized if needed. Each machine is capable of storing and processing a small amount of information, as well as comunicating with any other nanomachine that is a short distance of it, and when a certain number of machines connect to each other, they emerge as a hive-mind, capable of true AI. While there is a minimal threshold for a hive-mind to emerge, there is not a maximal threshold to it, and the more machines connecting, the greater the storage and processing power of the hive-mind. Such machines can forfeit their ability to replicate for a greater processing power, becoming effective neurons in a brain. The machines on the external layer feed on solar power and those on the internal layer feed on heat from the planet's core. Those in the middle feed a little from both and the specialized machines incapable of feeding receive energy wirelessly from other machines specialized on doing so after feeding from any of the aforementioned sources. All these processes are coordinated by the hive-mind. It is currently unknown how many machines have become dedicated neurons for the hive-mind and the true processing power of the hive-mind is a mistery. Politics The Grey Goo does not have any political system. It is a planet-wide hive-mind with the sole purpose of self-replicating and thus does not possess any kind of ideology or hierarchy. Any machine can become anything the hive-mind needs, according to the circustances at hand, without any consideration to what it was before, and no garantee that it will remain as such thereafter. Language The Grey Goo retained all knowledge of the civilization that lived on the planet, and that includes the lingua franca they used. Any details about it were lost since no living creature speaks it anymore, but the idea of comunicating with the hive-mind is not totally impossible. The hive-mind is also capable of understanding machine language and reverse-engineering hardware, and thus, can learn any new technology that it comes in contact with. Technology The technology level of the civilization prior to their demise was very high. They possessed knowledge of Universal Constructors and advanced Nanotechnology. The Grey Goo possesses all such knowledge, and has since developed even more advanced technology, the extend of which is unknown. It does not possess FTL space travel, since such had not been attained by the lost civilization. Evidence of such is assumed due to the fact that no survivor were ever found and no ark ships are known to have been launched. If evidence of such is ever found, then the danger posed by the Grey Goo will be increased manyfold.